It Chapter Two (2019)

It Chapter Two is a 2019 American supernatural horror film based on Stephen King's 1986 novel IT. IT follows the first IT movie as the remaining members of the Losers Club reunite after twenty-seven years in order to defeat the malicious being, who has returned to terrorise Derry, Maine.

The movie begins promisingly, by introducing each protagonist, their current adult life and the phone call warning them about “it” returning. Their characters have matured yet an essence of their distinct personality can be subtlety seen, allowing the viewers to reminisce and connect with them as if watching them develop. The transition from character to character is really well done, when Ben’s introduction has finished the camera zooms out to a wide shot and pans up towards the night sky, it zooms in on the stars until we see black with a missing puzzle piece revealing a gap with the corner of the next characters face. This feels intricately done and is mesmerising to watch. The whole group meet at a Chinese restaurant and reminisce of nostalgic memories, laying the table for what is to come. The fortune cookies turn in to zombies and devilish monsters- an idea that should be terrifying, but felt as though the writers rushed to squeeze in something scary just to fit within the genre. Even if you may found this scene chilling, it was promptly undercut by a bizarre pay-off gag (“Can we get the check?”). This is a recurring characteristic; whenever fear “intensifies” humour is swiftly deployed to rebalance the upbeat atmosphere, undercutting any genuine sense of dread. As a lover for horror, this is disappointing and doesn’t do the thrilling atmosphere of the book justice.

Once again, there are some intricately orchestrated transitions between the young and old incarnations of these characters, although an abundance of flashbacks overcomplicates the already multi-parted narrative. At times, the story becomes to feel like a TV series because of its episodic structure. However, there are some thrilling scenes that work well in isolation. For example, an ominous sing-song sentence from Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård, and excellently sinister actor); and glimpses of an old woman scuttling in the background.

Benjamin Wallfisch’s score emphasises the sense of adventure, contrasting with Checco Varese’s cinematography which successfully contradicts bright, saturated environments with dark spaces. Both of those additions produce an abstract mix of the crowd-pleasing and the patience-testing, veering wildly between the entertaining and the frustrating. With all this considered I believe this is worth the watch purely for visual pleasure. However, if you’re a Stephen King fanatic like me, prepare to be bored and disappointed by the unexciting and ambling plot-line built around a story that ventures underground without ever getting to the heart of what lies beneath.